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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

I changed to Crux from Slackware 8.1, there where some significant changes in how it was installed, you have to partition and mount everything by yourself, the ncurses setup program only installs the packages, after it finishes you have to manually edit the conf. files. This I saw as a bit of a challange at first but later on I thought it gave me a great freedom to learn what was going on behind the scenes. After it was all set up and done, thanks to the wonderful ports system updating and adding new programs was a piece of cake. A real nice distro which might be hard to learn at first but when you are comfortable, its a real good experience. Its also worth noting theres a good documentation covering the whole installation process.

I've tested this distribution on my spare machine and am about to move to it on my main machine as well.

I don't mind that it doesn't have an installer as such, after all this distribution is for people who know a bit about linux, and it says so on their website.

During the install you will compiler your own kernel from 2.4.23 sources. It helps to know what to chose in the kernel and also know what hardware you run for putting entries in rc.modules and such.

I like the way initscripts work (BSD style) , using Peanut Linux 9.5 I felt right at home (as would eg Slackware users).

Everything in this distro tries to keep things simple and lean. All documentation that's not in man pages or READMEs doesn't get installed. This results in a nicely small ISO to download (190MB)

Crux comes with a good collection of "essential" programs , xfree and windowmaker, although I did remove window maker and installed xfce4 instead. Crux also has ports of Gnome, KDE etc but I prefer a leaner environment.

Some of the ports didn't have the configure options I wanted, but it was very easy to change the script in the appropriate folder.

An excellent distribution for advanced users. It has a very clear file layout and nothing un-necessary, just the files I need.
It starts with about 20 processes and I know what process is doing what and that feels good, compared to fedora, which runs about 100 processes and I don't have any idea what they are doing.
It's also really stable, I am using it to host my site and provide hosting to other people and it runs very smoothly.

I have been using SuSE, slackware, colledge linux, gentoo and Fedora, and crux is my choise for computers running servers, it is the most efficient in terms of resources. So A+ for the distribution.

CRUX is the fastest Linux distro I have ever used, bar none. I switched away from it to Gentoo because I wasn't sure of its "lifespan" - it is a small distro in terms of community and I didn't want to base my main machine on something that may go away at the most inoportune moment. My fears were unfounded, but alas I have since switched away from CRUX.

I loved the BSD init and package management, plus the easy configuration. Very minimal and nothing was installed that you didn't want. Great for experts and even new users looking to learn some things.